Nas' "Greatest Hits": A Track-By-Track Journey With the Pride of Queens

"Made You Look" from God's Son

"Coming after the success of Stillmatic, I just had so much more in me to get out, so I just wanted to come back with some more shit, and I came back with Lost Tapes, and a month or two later, God's Son. So I had a lot to get out around that time, a lot of energy."

"I Can" from God's Son

"That was a groundbreaking period for me. That was my biggest radio record I ever had, and like 'If I Ruled the World,' it was used by tons of schools for their graduation. A song like that helped me because I have a daughter, and because I make so much music that when she was younger I didn't want her to listen to, I owed her and other kids something, something real, something real that's up their alley, to show that I cared, that I'm a human being, that I'm not just about giving you a tune about what happens in the 'hood and all that every day. I've got to be a real human being, and that was one of my real human being records right there, for my daughter. So yeah, that's one of the most important records I ever made."

"Bridging the Gap" featuring Olu Dara, from Street's Disciple

"I got to know [my father] more in that whole period, I got to learn more about him and his life and his career and why he made certain decisions, things that I never asked before. It brought me closer to him, and also just made me look at life different, just watching him and how he'd come up, and the musical decisions that he chose to be where he is. Most kids in the 'hood don't have their fathers around or didn't have their fathers around. The ones I grew up with had dope fiend fathers and shit like that, crackhead fathers, convict fathers that stayed in jail, like the story goes. Treach had this rap, 'Never knew my dad / motherfuck the fag.' If you played that in the club back in the days, all you had to do was turn down the music from 'Never knew my dad,' and the whole crowd would scream, 'Motherfuck the fag,' because everybody can relate to that, even me. Not with my father, but with my friends. I thought it was important to put a record with my pops is just, out there. It was just important to me."